Recently, it was announced that for the first time in American history, half of the members of Congress are millionaires. The richest member is representative Daniel Issa, a Republican of California, who owns approximately $630 million. This comes after December’s poll by Gallup.com, which shows that only 12% of Americans think Congress is doing a good job.

A CNN poll last month showed that 70% of Americans think this Congress has done nothing. The 113th Congress has passed 56 laws in its first session, on track to become the least productive Congress in four decades. One-third of the 148 proposed bills by the House were to repeal, delay, or defund Obamacare. The Obamacare debate sparked a brief government shutdown, which dragged their approval rating to an all-time low.

Democrats and Republicans alike are being paid a million dollars to basically sit and argue. I am sitting here writing this and arguing. How come I do not get a million dollars too? None of the 113th Congress deserves to be millionaires, since bipartisanship has obstructed legislative progress. As the saying goes, “Since con is the opposite of pro, the opposite of progress is Congress.”

This is an example of the disgusting wealth inequality that is plaguing America. The average professional athlete will make more in a year than the average American will make in a lifetime. Sports entertain Americans, and create jobs.

But, is an athlete more important to society than a doctor or a police officer? Sure, it takes talent to throw a baseball 100 miles an hour, or kick a 50-yard field goal, but if you go into cardiac arrest in frustration over the Super Bowl, Peyton Manning is not going to save you, a nurse will.

The average CEO of an average company makes 380 times as much as the average employee. Note, not the janitor, the median employee. This means that said employee must work a year and two weeks to make what the CEO earns in a day.

The minds of CEOs are brilliant, but do they really deserve that much more than the average employee? Laws in Sweden are enacted to make sure that this number is only 20 times, and the rule of thumb in Japan for CEOs is to make 7 times as much as the average employee. The Japanese regulate themselves, so why can we not?

Greed is destroying America. The 1% is a reality. No matter how hard the 99% works, they will never achieve what the 1% take for granted. This is the primary issue with capitalism. It benefits the wealthy, but hurts the poor. However, we certainly will never be a communist nation, and Congress always vetoes socialist-type laws. Therefore, our current system, between socialism and pure capitalism, must be altered.

You cannot take away someone’s hard-earned money and give it to the poor, like Robin Hood. However, people are out on the streets starving, while others sit in mansions with five sports cars. People should make money based on the value of their jobs, and how they benefit society. Athletes should make a small amount, and so should the 113th Congress, because until they resolve their petty difference, they will not be benefiting our society at all.